


DeathHawk

by rainer76



Category: (DeathHawk), Black Hawk Down (2001), Death Stranding (Video Games), Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Body Horror, Gore, M/M, Tentacles, cross-over, genre mash-up, modification, non-con elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-15
Updated: 2017-02-15
Packaged: 2018-09-24 13:48:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9744236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainer76/pseuds/rainer76
Summary: So a little while, xzombiexkittenz requested a cross-over between Death Stranding and Black Hawk Down.  Mads and Hugh in military uniform?  Sure.  Mads looking like a creep?  No problem.  Hugh looking like a nineteen year old twink?  Bring it on!  Er, in short, there's no excuse for the following.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is obviously as AU as they go. I'm not a gamer. I have no idea about the basic premise behind Death Stranding, other than what I can glean from the trailers and run with. Outlandish theories are abound and none of this is accurate.

The chalk used to give him shit about his surname – forefingers across their upper lip, Nazi salutes and their best German accents pronouncing _I know nothing! Noooo-- **thiiing**!_ \- like those fuckers were old enough to remember _Hogan’s Heroes_. They gave him shit right up until Schmid clamped a femoral artery shut between thumb and forefinger, hand made into a cone as he dug his fingers into the flesh of the open wound, and calmly dodged artillery shells, rocket launchers, and an armouries worth of bullets while patching the men up. After that the chalk (those alive and not bullet-ridden) shut down any jokes about shitty TV shows and were mighty glad their nineteen-year-old medic did, in fact, know a thing or two.

Schmid found out about the odds later – a hundred and sixty men against four thousand militia – eighteen dead and his chalk running through the dusty back roads in their combat boots with empty rifles slung over their shoulders. The high _ping_ of bullets ricochetting off the Paki tanks, and how when the men screamed his name it wasn’t with a terrible German accent. There wasn't a mark on him when it was all said and done – but Schmid was painted red/brown/black with the run off from blood, dust, and rifle oil. He was a whole new flag – or maybe it was Mogadishu’s oldest one.

When they jogged back through the gates of the Stadium it was a solid fifty-two minutes later.

Men collapsed onto their knees, walked slow circles staring at the pale blue sky or just bowled over and cried; delayed shock, adrenalin, grief, take your pick. Kurt Schmid kept jogging and didn’t stop until he reached the hospital ward, where the real surgeons were, and was promptly thrown out on his ass.

“You did good, kid,” Sergeant Eversmann said. He was twenty-four.  In the Ranger’s Eversmann was five years older than the average mean and acted like it was the equivalent of five decades. “You did real good.”

The politicians later said the mission was an unqualified success. All objectives achieved.

No one called it for the fuck-up it was.

Clinton withdrew all U.S rangers from Somalia within the year.

 

***

 

Kurt grew up on Army bases, Fort Benning and Dahlonega, even spent time in Berlin but that jewel he kept to himself (no need to give the boys extra fodder with their teasing), and he hasn’t thought about the Mogadishu Mile in years. At the time, he thought it was the worst day of his life.

Here’s the kicker – he was nineteen – he had decades yet to prove himself wrong.

 

 

****

 

 

The worst day consists of World War Two paratroopers, soldiers with skulls instead of faces – decades dead - and sludge that is sentient, that crawls out of the ocean like black oil; it’s a transplant of history that clashes with what he _knows_ is real. It’s like a fucking time warp opened up in Madison Square Gardens and dumped the future/past/and present inside a fishbowl.

Except there isn’t no King Arthur, Galahad or Tristan, to lead the faithful to safety.

Eversmann was their first casualty; body torn in half, his trunk sitting opposite his legs.

It’s reanimated armies stalking through Washington, and umbilical cords (the guys cuss and say tentacles) that stretch to the OICs, dressed in desert colours – or at least Kurt figures they’re the officers in command. He’s seen at least four ‘modern’ soldiers so far, with a chalk of six World War two zombies on their attached ‘leashes’ at their feet. He’s never been close enough to determine if the OIC’s are alive or dead. Never wanted to find out either, to be honest.

But that’s currently the least of their concerns. “It’s a kid,” Twomthy mutters.

“I know it’s a fucking kid,” Schmid snarls.

“Is it one of ours or one of theirs?”

Doubtfully, Miz pokes at the barrel of amniotic goo and the infant floating inside of it. It’s future tech, nothing Schmid or the rest of the guys are familiar with. They might be able to break it down and reverse engineer it, but they’ll need someplace safe to do so, and there’s no telling what will happen to the kid floating inside of it. “Looks human,” Miz concludes.

Twomthy stares at him as if he’s an idiot. “So do the mascara-loving ‘pussies….until they shoot a tentacle up your nostril!”

Miz rolls his eyes.

That’s just here-say but Twomthy has a one-track mind and lately he’s fixated on the idea of tentacles, orifices, and any number of unlikely scenarios.

“She doesn’t look like an octopus to me,” Schmid says, peering at the infant. She’s a perfectly formed baby girl, two arms, two legs, not an electrical appendage on her chest in sight. Her cheekbone is a soft curve, her eyelashes dark, one foot kicks out into the thick, purplish fluid. Her hair is auburn, matted to her head in a short crown.

Twomthy rolls the barrel: the clear glass is capped by metal on either end, and turns it upside down. “Let me have a look-see.”

“Don’t shake the fucking tank!” Schmid scolds irritably, and takes the barrel off Twomthy before the infant winds up with a spinal injury. Bewildered, he asks: “Who the hell gave it to you?”

“Some fat dude. Shoved it in my arms, said keep the child safe, then he tore off down the tunnel. The ‘pussy’ and his attached chalk came soon after. I figure you’re a medic,” Miz shrugs. “So you’ll know what to do.”

 _He’ll know what to do._ Schmid pinches the bridge of his nose.

The rifle’s balanced on his knees as he squats by the railway line, knuckles braced against the cold steel. There are puddles of water, a pervasive smell of mildew, of bloating rot in the air. The torches clamped to their tactical vests are turned off but the tunnel’s end is limmed by daylight, enough to see by. “The chalk?”

“Put enough bullets in them to shatter their skulls to dust. They’re dead. Or deader than they were anyway.”

“And the octopus?” Schmid continues with false calm.

Octopus, pussy, they use any derogatory term they can come up with to describe the ‘alien’ commanders. Insults, he knows, are the oldest method to disguise instinctive fear.

He’d seen the same chalk three days previous, the officer in command caught in his cross-hairs.

Schmid hadn’t taken the shot, kept his finger loose on the trigger – if the odds were bad in Somalia they were even worse here – so heavily outnumbered by a necromantic army.  He couldn’t risk the sound of the retort, how quickly his guys would be discovered if he did so, but he remembered aiming a bullet at the man’s skull and _hesitating._ The OIC looked alive in ways the others hadn’t. He moved with brutal elegance. His BDUs didn’t reveal a flag or any type of affiliation or unit. The standard desert camos were markedly out of place in the steel grey’s and blues of the city. Schmid wondered where he was snatched from, what _time_ \- if he were UN or Special Forces or some Peacekeeper Task force he’d never heard of - if he were British, German, a Dane.

Schmid wondered how long he’d been dead – or if there was something ( _anything)_ inside of him that was alive still.

He wondered about the sludge running out of the OICs eyes like a river, about the cords attached to his chest, inter-connected to the zombies he commanded. How they communicated without a word spoken.

Kurt froze with startled alarm when the chalk hunkered into a defensive mode, when the OIC pivoted on his heel, one hand shading his eyes, and peered across the rooftops - the high-rise gardens, some horticulturist trying to rebuild the quality of air in the city - and found the window Schmid was crouched behind with unerring accuracy.

Not for a second did he imagine the faint curve of the man’s smile, the sharpness of his teeth.

Whoever he was or had been, he had the type of arrogance common with the uppity-ups, the generals and taskmasters of the military. Unlike most of those guys, he carried himself like a killer, as if the hunt was the most satisfying game in the world.

Twomthy coughs, unease etched into his features. “Didn’t see him; didn’t hear him in the tunnels either.”

“Fine.” They can’t stay here any longer, better to jump tracks and take another route, it’s not like they have to worry about on-coming trains anymore. “Take Miz and Hobart and clear out. Keep John Connor in her tank until I figure out what to do with her.” At least she’s inaudible inside the glass barrel, the last thing they need is a kid’s endless squalling to draw every bonehead to their position.

“You’re naming the kid after a film?”

“Yeah,” Kurt says, and smiles faintly, dusting his knees off as he stands up. “John here ain’t no pussy.”

“I think you’re confusing her already.”

 

***

 

Schmid hangs back. Taylor has his six, facing the tunnel’s entrance and fucking up his own night vision. They listen to the sound of the men as they follow the fourth avenue railway line - the shuffle of their packs on their shoulders, the odd stone kicked underfoot – inside the tunnel noise seems embellished; deceptive, echoed by the tiled walls and reflected by the water that’s seeped into the subway. Schmid waits until they’re out of earshot then turns in the opposite direction. The rifle is hitched to his shoulder, his eyes and the barrel aligned as he sweeps left to right. Taylor paces him, three steps back and on the opposite wall. Kurt stays light on his feet, quiet as a cat, until he finds the maintenance access point – a wooden side-door half off its hinges - that leads to the old sea beach line and Coney island. The smell of saline, ocean-salt, floods through the cracks.

Inside the new tunnel it’s pitch-black.

Schmid can feel his skin crawl, the slow trip of his heart-rate increasing.

There’s no discernible difference between having his eyes open or shut when he crosses into the access point. He counts the steps in his head – one, two, three, four, five, six, left turn - and stands still with his back braced against the slimy wall, ears straining as he enters the new railway line. Miz said he shot the entire chalk and Schmid has no reason to doubt him, but the OIC is a different matter.

The OIC might have gone back when his troops were destroyed.

Or he might have a whole new pack of bloodhounds at his disposal. The problem with zombies is there's an endless supply.

Schmid’s been career military his entire life, grew up an army brat with dreams of grandeur – go forward, move back – he knows the only thing he can’t afford to do is remain still, to be indecisive. He unsnaps the utility compartment on his vest, grabs the NVG’s by the band and settles the goggles over his forehead and eyes. The world flickers from onyx black to a sickly green. Rifle stock pressed hard into his shoulder, he whistles once, under his breath, between his teeth. Taylor joins him, fumbling in the dark as he makes his way through. Schmid waits until Taylor has his night vision goggles situated and then they resume their journey.

The thing about the end of the world is that medicine - drugs, bandages, first-aid, books, _any_ kind of paraphernalia – takes on a currency of its own. He needs to make contact with Hoot, with Delta, and restock their own supplies before he catches up with the others. They need Intel on troop movements, on the zombie army, their leaders, on their fucking creepy design, and their own communications went dark long since, when the invasion first began. Contact between cells is made physically and at great risk.  Ironically, he can understand the Somali’s better: now that it is _his_ country that’s been invaded. They’re the militia – they’re the bandits – running around the underground like rats. He’s going to need fucking diapers, Schmid thinks incredulously, some way to feed John, to keep her alive when she comes out of the tank. He doesn’t know the first thing about babies.

Black oil laps at his boots, the smell of brine putrid.

Up ahead a metal beast looms out of the nightmare green, windows shattered like empty eye-sockets. Six carriages long it slumbers on the tracks. Kurt presses himself against the left side of the tunnel, Taylor on the right, and they keep moving forward in sync. The train is deserted except for the occasional pale face, slouched against the window - white wisps of hair, gaunt cheekbones, decayed teeth. He clears the last carriage and stops, waiting for Taylor to re-emerge on the opposite side. Seconds turn into minutes.  His muscles wire tighter and tighter as he waits

“Little soldier boy,” says a voice.

Kurt drops to one knee. His finger is a hairsbreadth from pulling the trigger. He can’t afford to fire at nothing, heart-rate jack-rabbiting as he pans right to left, up to down, as he checks his six, and tries to find something to hunker behind. The tunnel’s not particularly accommodating in that regard.

“Tut, tut, tut,” the voice admonishes. It’s cultured, foreign, it sounds endlessly amused.

Green train, green tracks, green tiles with graffiti on the walls, green wood and sludge that looks black no matter what infrared spectrum they use. “What do you want?” he grits out. It’s against the grain to speak aloud but Kurt’s already hanging out in the open like a hairy sac-ball. His rifle is trained on the end carriage. Nothing moves inside, nothing stirs on the outside. He doesn’t know where Taylor is, but if Kurt speaks and the OIC answers, then Taylor might get a sonar line on the pussy’s location.

“Good of you to ask: I’m looking for a girl, as a matter of fact, you might know her as Abigail?”

He thinks of the infant in her barrel of fluid, of her petite features, her blood-red hair. “Can’t say the name’s familiar.”

“A pity.” There’s a dry scuttle in the dark, of vines moving, of things creeping forward.

Kurt swallows. The barrel of his gun moves constantly as he inches away. “Are you human?”

“Interesting – am I human? - an existential question if ever there was one.” His voice echoes in the dim wetness, it changes direction at random. Kurt grimaces, turning his head to the left, and wonders how many access tunnels there are.   “I certainly never thought so when I was. Too banal.”

“You’ve been changed,” Kurt latches onto, and wonders if he can work with that, if what was done can be reversed.  He’s a medic not a doctor but it’s a place to start. “They changed you.”

“Nothing changed me. I became,” the voice corrects, indulgent.   “As will you…I seem to need a new unit.”

Kurt throws himself back, spine on the tracks, and opens fire above. He catches a glimpse of high cheekbones, of eight tentacles, of a body clinging to the ceiling like a fucking spider. The OIC jerks as bullets riddle it. He snarls, animalistic and enraged. One of the tentacles flails free. The end (the socket, the plug? Whatever connects to the zombies) lights up like a roman candle, incandescent, and fiery bright.  

Swearing, Kurt throws a forearm over his goggles, tears them off his eyes, but the damage is already done. There are green spots in his vision, blinded by the flare and pitched into utter blackness.

He rolls. Kurt gathers his knees under him and takes off down the tunnel like a greyhound. The rifle is spent, the weight an extra burden in his headlong flight. He ditches it without a thought and pulls the Bowie, his breathing harsh and irregular as he hurtles onward.

Behind him, the water thrashes with movement.

There’s a moment when Kurt’s running and then there’s a moment when he’s not - when something muscular curls around his ankle, coils tight, and yanks. It’s done violently. It feels like it’s trying to dislocate every joint in his leg – ankle, knee, hip socket – Kurt’s airborne (he’s a fucking Airborne Ranger!) and then gravity catches up to him and he smacks face down onto the railways tracks. His teeth clack together. He damn near bites his tongue in half. The air’s compressed out of his lungs in a violent whoosh, face submerged in three inches of brackish water. He breaks the surface, curls over with his lungs hacking, and slashes downward with the knife.

In front of him, more tentacles light up one by one, illuminating the OIC as he strides forward. His eyes reflect like hellfire, lit up by the sparks, and the smile is more pronounced now, full lips, a sensuous curve with nothing but the promise of carnage in his wake. “Little soldier boy,” he repeats softly, a warning, before the appendage around Kurt’s ankle ignites like an electrical charge. In the water, the effect is so much worse. Kurt spasms. His entire body arches into a bridge, concave. His heart seizes then restarts, too fast, quick and arrhythmic. It seems to last eternity before the light dies out and Kurt sags into the waiting darkness, the knife clattering, gone into the water. “We were discussing Abigail, I believe.”

“I don’t – I haven’t – “

“An infant,” the OIC encourages. “A civilian stole her from a research facility – far from here.”

“How – how far?”

“Entire lifetimes ahead.” Kurt closes his eyes. There’s a strange taste in the back of his mouth, like iron filaments, like a precursor to throwing up. His limbs keep twitching in the water, random firing of neurons, his brain scrambled by the electric shock. He can hear the impatience in the commander’s voice when he continues. “The child entered the subway not far from here and since then not one of my chalk have returned.”

“She’s --- a sly one,” Kurt pants.

“Very fleet,” the OIC concurs.

Kurt can hear the smile again in his voice. It doesn’t seem to bode well.  In the movies the hero always has a smart comeback, a quick quip, an insult or two ready to fling. It’s formula movie-making, it’s _entertaining_ , and it has shit-all to do with reality. SERE – survive, evade, resist, escape – there’s a reason why survive comes first and it doesn’t include antagonising the guy with all the power. Kurt clenches his teeth, he knocks his free leg to one side, trying to feel for the hilt of the knife against his thigh.

“Report,” the OIC commands.

His free leg is secured when another coil wraps around his ankle. Kurt goes preternaturally still when a third slithers up to his waistline, rubbing over the sopping material, finding the gaps between buttons. His breath hitches when a fourth finds his suprasternal notch and rests in the hollow, a warm muscular lump at the base of his throat. “Special Operations Combat Medic, Corporal Kurt Schmid, 68 Whiskey.”

“Lieutenant-Colonel Lecter,” the OIC replies, casual as a meet and greet.   “United Nations, Peace Keeping Task Force.”

“This is peacekeeping?”

“More like solving a dilemma.”

In the dim light his hair is ash-blonde, face dirt-grimed the same way everything is covered in muck in this world. His cheekbones are an artist’s impression of perfection, eyes honeyed brown, striated with red from the flares. He’s watching Kurt’s reactions closely. He looks rapt, utterly fascinated; as if presented with an unexpected boon. Lecter doesn’t seem dead to Kurt. He doesn’t feel dead. He has one palm resting against Kurt’s shin and the warmth bleeds through the wet material of his BDUs, soaks into his flesh. Kurt can’t figure out how the ropes (coils, tentacles?), are attached to Lecter, they disappear behind his tac-vest, the origin point hidden from sight. They feel organic against his throat – Lecter controls them like he would an extra appendage, as easily as he does his arms or legs – but their use seems bio-mechanical.

“Forgive me, Corporal, it’s been a long time since I’ve spoken to another human being. The dead are so often missing their tongues, you see.” Kurt flinches. He presses his palms against the wooden slats, digs his heels into the earth, and worms backwards by an inch. Lecter’s too close, he’s crouched above, looming over Kurt like a gargoyle. The black rope around his throat flickers to the side, rests against his carotid as if taking his measure. “You’re heart-rate is arrhythmic.”

“Yeah,” Kurt rasps, acerbic. “You electrocuted me, you son of a bitch.”

“Language, Corporal.  If it doesn’t stabilise in the next few minutes you might need another shock, to knock it back into its natural rhythm.”

Yeah. Kurt doesn’t really trust the guy with the wavering tentacles to do that properly.

The coil resting on his stomach swishes back and forth, indolent as a cat’s tail. Nominally, if it were civilian life, Kurt could have admitted Lecter was good-looking in a way that was a off-centre from the norm, there’s a powerful agility to the way he moves, he exudes a sense of command that Kurt both _craves_ for and hates. Little soldier boy with daddy issues isn’t the oldest kink in the book, but it sure as shit isn’t the most original story to be found either. The intensity of the man’s stare is unnerving; even more unnerving, is that Kurt can feel himself react to it, subliminal, below his ability to control.

Lecter hums thoughtfully, head tilted as if listening. “Taylor tells me you have a girl in your possession? A John Connor?”

Shocked, Kurt’s head snaps upward.

There’s one tentacle that feeds over Lecter’s shoulder and trails into the dark, toward the silent passenger train.   The water ripples. Concentric circles tap at the metal railway lines. When Taylor finally stumbles into view he’s missing his helmet, his rifle is slung over his shoulder, barrel pointed to the ground. His neck is twisted grotesquely, wrung and _wrung_ until it’s crushed into half its normal size. One eyeball has ruptured, squeezed out by the sheer force, and it swings across his cheekbone on its optic stem, jiggling with each step. His hands dangle uselessly. The cable (tentacle, appendage? fucking decide, Kurt thinks hysterically) spears through Taylor’s spine at the L4. His mouth is open, tongue a bloody stump, as if he’d chewed it off or bitten down so hard he’d lacerated it into two. Taylor’s connected to Lecter the same way the zombies were and Lecter reels him in, implacable, even as the other tentacles brush over Kurt’s hips, thighs, as they slither over his own bared throat like a caress.  The water feels icy all of a sudden. Kurt twists onto his stomach, galvanised, desperate to find the knife again.

“Sssh,” Lecter soothes. The coils lash out in opposite direction, catching his limbs in a four-pointed star, until Kurt thinks he’s going to be drawn and quartered on the railway tracks. He’s making harsh sounds in the back of his throat, low and animal like. Lecter hunkers close, he flips Kurt bodily onto his back and rucks the shirt half way up his torso.

“Don’t,” Kurt says, feverish with fear and not above begging. “Please don’t.”

Dead is one thing. Dead is clean, instant, no future, no past. Death is oblivion, utter silence, and Kurt came to accept that black hole of nothingness a long time ago. Zombies, his corpse forever attached to this ‘man,’ necromancy, is a whole different ball game. He can't understand a future where the population is so decimated, so limited in numbers, that using the dead is an acceptable resource.  Kurt wasn’t prepared for that.

“Sssh,” Lecter repeats. “It’s alright now. I missed having someone to converse with.”

The tentacle across his stomach raises itself, the narrow end razor sharp. The edge draws a shallow smile across his exposed belly, the parted lips of his flesh painted red. It renders through subcutaneous fat before Kurt has time to scream, his insides bared. “Hush now,” Lecter murmurs, as he makes room, as the rope dips inside. It undulates, the movement suggestive, a facsimile of fucking. Kurt keens, every limb held taut, stretched wide into immobility. The tentacle is black, slicked with red when it finally pulls itself free, and that black ochre that coats everything drips from the very tip, taints his organs, runs into his bloodstream. Soundless, Kurt’s scream is denied when Lecter smothers his mouth with one palm. The same tentacle sparks fire, and with agonizing thoroughness, cauterizes the wound. When it’s over, Lecter fists one hand in his tunic and jerks Kurt upright, out of the icy water.

The tunnel is roaring in his ears, a hurricane wind. Nausea has him vomiting at the abrupt change in height, a thin stream of bile that stains his shirt, but Kurt hasn’t eaten properly in days and there’s nothing decent to throw up. He’s panting like a dog against Lecter’s neck, little hurt whimpers he can’t suppress. He’s waistline is a band of agony.

It’s clinical shock, he knows, the brutality of the incision, the horror of the invasion. Twomthy was right, Kurt thinks, emotions muddled, except the tentacles made their own orifice.

Lecter’s hand is hot against his naked skull, cradling his body close. He’s talking nonsense into Kurt’s ear, a stream of dialogue Kurt can’t parse, but it’s toned low, meant to be reassuring. Kurt isn’t soothed. Kurt’s apoplectic. He’s staring over Lecter’s shoulder at where Taylor stands, hooked up to his umbilical cord and dead, so very dead. Glassy eyed and mute.

Long minutes later Kurt’s still trembling with aftershocks and it seems holding onto the person responsible for it is an oxymoron, the worst kind of life-decision, except Kurt can’t force himself to look down, to acknowledge the blistering scar on his stomach or ask what was done to him and why. “Easy.” Lecter eventually says, switching to English again. “It’s alright now.”

In the movies there’s always some smart arse comeback. _I’m going to kill you. I’m going to find out what you did to me and **why** , and when I do, there will be a reckoning, Colonel Lecter._

He has no delusions about how he looks; hair shorn to the skull, ears sticking out like an elf, he's seen the glances older men used to throw in his direction. Kurt looks all of twelve at the best of times, he used to be carded if he so much as _glanced_ at a nightclub. He knows guerrilla warfare, the tactics of subterfuge, and he has no qualms about using every advantage in his possession if it saves Abigail, the child Lecter's looking for.  If it saves his men from Taylor's fate. Kurt figures his time is already on a short rope (he had it coiled in his gut), and that's okay, that's fine.  

Surviving isn't everything.


End file.
